I dont know what the first one represents but if it's deleted the computer does nothing and it's apparently the "main" one. If I move it to second the PC boots fine but into a different XP. There are usually 4 user accounts listed when the PC works, but there are only 2 users listed if I move the second selection to first place.

This PC originally had 98 installed and was upgraded to XP Home.

There are hardware or software changes. When started in SAFE mode the last driver is displayed is "Mup.sys".

Well, the contents of the boot.ini file say that you have two versions of XP installed in the same partition, one in the C:\Windows folder, and the other in the C:\WinXP folder. Microsoft has stated that this will cause problems; if you have two versions of XP installed, they should be in separate partitions. What do you mean by "deleting the first one"? Are you modifying the boot.ini file? And if so, how?

You can change which one is the default by modifying the "default" line in boot.ini so that instead of having "WINDOWS" at the end, it has "WINXP" there. But I really think you might have to do a clean install. Maybe other experts will have other ideas.

another thing..when i do select the
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINXP="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

option, it goes through the disk check and then reboots itself. the same thing happens if i do normal or last known good. is there a way to get into whatever necessary files there is on that OS partition to disable the reboot on errors in the system recovery?

Can you get into Safe mode with Command Prompt? You could then use the REG command to turn off the autoboot.

At the Safe Mode Command Prompt log on as administrator. Type the following at the command prompt:
REG /QUERY HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Crashcontrol /v Autoreboot

You should get a value of either 1 or 0. 1=true; 0=false, therefore if it is 1 then do the following:
REG /DELETE HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Crashcontrol /v AutoReboot
REG /ADD HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashContron /v AutoReboot /t REG_DWORD /d 0

Otherwise, another way is to mount the drive as a slave drive in another XP computer and then: When your drive with the problem is mounted as the slave in the computer where you have the working XP system, you access the auto reboot setting in the registry of that slave drive in this way:

Start -> Run -> REGEDIT -> OK button

Choose the Load Hive option of Regedit's File menu, after highlighting the key in the left pane called HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. In the dialog box that opens up navigate to this:

X:\Windows\system32\config\system

where the "X" is replaced by the drive letter of the slave drive. When you are asked for a name, choose "OldSystem" or "BadSystem" or whatever appeals to you. Next:

Navigate to this key in the left pane of Regedit's display:

OldSystem\CurrentControlSet\Control\Crashcontrol

Click on the Crashcontrol subkey, and you will see as one of the items on the right pane of the Regedit display a name called Autoreboot, which should have a value of 1 (one). Double click on the Autoreboot name, and you will be given the ability to change the value to 0 (zero.) This turns off the auto reboot option that is present by default in XP.

Now highlight the "OldSystem" or "BadSystem" key (whatever it was that you chose as the name to call the hive), click the File menu, and choose Unload Hive. Exit Regedit.

When you put the slave drive back into its original computer, it should no longer reboot automatically on error. Then we can do further troubleshooting, like using MSCONFIG to turn off startup programs, temporarily removing unnecessary hardware, etc.

Since I"m able to boot into the WINXP system, does the disabling of the reboot affect the Windows partition? Does that make sense? I suppose I have to disable BOTH OS's? one doesn't carry over to the other?

and I cannot boot into safe mode, it always stops at the mup.sys file..

Does either Safe mode with command prompt work, or you can put the hard drive as a secondary drive on a working XP system? If neither of those, then the only other thing I can think of is to use the BartPE tool to boot from a CD and then use the plugin called RegeditPE which will allow you to edit the registry to turn off autoboot:

It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on.
This will replace any Dos bootdisk in no time!

Registry Editor PE is a plugin for Bart's PE Builder which allows for easy editing of remote registry hives and user profiles. A user booting from a Bart's PE CD can easily make changes to the Windows registry without having to boot into Windows.

Since I can boot into the WINXP part, can I fix whatever needs to be fixed from there to the WINDOWS part? including the auto reboot? and i've already disabled startup items in msconfig and tried to figure out if there was some hardware causing the problems but this PC is basically bare other than a floppy and Cd rom drive.

I'm not talking about regular Safe mode; I'm talking about Safe mode with Command Prompt, another option on the Advanced Options Menu.

>Since I"m able to boot into the WINXP system, does the disabling of the reboot affect the Windows partition? Does that make sense? I suppose I have to disable BOTH OS's? one doesn't carry over to the other?

No, the two registries for that option are entirely separate, in either the first or the second of these folders:

I've used BartPE, and it is relatively easy for an apparently advanced user like yourself. There are very complete instructions at the site where you download the file. But you will need an install CD for XP, in order to provide the source files for adding XP's needed system files to the core program provided by Bart's PE program.

If you can do a normal boot into the WinXP version, I think you should be able to do the "offline registry editing" of the Windows registry that I described at my previous comment, ID: 13799471, by the "load hive" method described there.

I did the "load hive" method but it wouldn't allow me to do the C:\Windows b/c it said "the process cannot access the file b/c it's being used by another process" but it would let me do the C:\WINXP so I put the 0 value in for the autoreboot. I rebooted to the Windows NOT the WINXP and the blue screen came up..The IRQL_Not_Less_or_Equal Stop 0x0000000A

and i attempted the BartPE program and it runs and created the pebuilder313 folder but it isn't creating the CD, and I'm selecting the burn to CD option.

OK. I'm going to attempt another Repair from the XP CD and I'm assuming when it asks which installation I want to repair Either WIndows or WINXP, I should pick the Windows??? and what repair steps should I run?

I guess I'm a bit confused. Isn't it the WinXP version that has 4 users, and that has been updated to SP2? And you can boot into it? I would think you want to get rid of the Windows version, perhaps after copying over some data to WinXP. With two versions of XP in the same partition, I wonder if trying to do a repair install (and on which version?) is a good idea... If you are still reluctant to try a clean install, then what exactly are you trying to do at this point?

If you want to try a repair install, this is a very good page about it:

According to the person who owns this computer, the login screen the computer can get to is an old XP login, before they added 4 users. The login it can get to now only has 2 users. Under Documents and Settings all the users are there; folder wise, but they no longer are appearing at the login screen to select.

WHen I did the "load hive" it would allow me to do the WINXP but would not allow me to do the Windows b/c it said it was in use, so that confuses me. Both boot to a windows XP screen.

Well, I think we can add the missing users back to the Welcome Screen. Are they present in the list of users available in the Users applet of Control Panel? If they don't show up there, do they when you type the following in the Run dialog box off the Start Menu?

control userpasswords2

As far as putting them back on the Welcome Screen, please see this page:

mdmcq5, I was fortunate enough to call in the aid of sramesh2k, one of the really top XPerts at our site, to help solve your problem. I will have to leave in about 5 minutes and be gone for about 8 hours. If the problem hasn't been solved in the meantime, I will be back later tonight to monitor your progress. Good luck!

>>Well, I think we can add the missing users back to the Welcome Screen. Are they present in the list of users available in the Users applet of Control Panel?
NO, there are only 2 listed.

As for the welcome screen, it looks to be as if the user accounts are on the WINXP partition and it's the one giving me trouble.

>>When you select the 1st item ( "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINXP" ), Windows reboots at every startup?
NO, this is the one that boots at every startup:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

the other one goes to the IRQL blue screen and is supposedly the one that has been the default for quite some time but for some reason or another it stopped working, so I selected the WINDOWS one and it booted fine.

I've attempted a fresh install but the blue screen appears. Is there a way to wipe this hard drive and start from scratch without having to take it out and place it into another machine as a slave to reformat??

If it mentions a third-party driver, then you can easily disable that using Recovery Console, by typing DISABLE <DRIVERNAME.EXT>

My Question:
=========

Just wanted to know if do you really want to have two installations of Windows XP in the same partition? The reason why I ask is that it's easy to do a clean installation and have a 2nd installation of Windows XP in another drive (if you have a spare partition available)

If you prefer to remove the "problematic" installation of Windows (out of the two), you can remove the reference in the Boot.ini file, and then delete the appropriate folders to recover space.

Didn't mention a drive name in the blue screen that i noticed only alot of numbers. I'll have to get back to the screen and take a look.

And NO I dont want to have two installations on this harddrive and there is only one. I was trying to fix this PC for someone who is having these problems and wanted to try and fix any problems before I did a clean install. The thing is that it won't let me do a clean install.

And I believe I've deleted the problematic Windows installation out of the boot.ini and the PC just sat at the startup screen, so i put it back and it would boot....

>> And I believe I've deleted the problematic Windows installation out of the boot.ini and the PC just sat at the startup screen, so i put it back and it would boot....

I don't think editing the boot.ini causes that symptom, as it goes upto the Windows startup screen.

>> The thing is that it won't let me do a clean install.

Option 1: Backup, Reformat and then do a clean installation
==========================================

As you dont' want Two XP installations in that drive, here is a possible options for you, that I can think of:

Start Windows XP (the one that works), and backup all of your data (you can probably move the data to another partition/drive or a removable media). Backup includes, all of your personal data, emails, favorites and everything in both of your XP installations.

Once you're sure all is backed up to a safer place, then, do a complete reformat of C: and then reinstall from the Windows XP CD-ROM.

I've Removed the "problematic" Windows XP entry in boot.ini as per http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/twoxp.txt
and have had no issues so far. I'm in the process of re-creating the user accounts and re-naming their original folders to name.original so once I log in as that user I'm moving all their files/folders. It seems to be working so far, but will keep you posted.

What are the chances that after moving the old files to the new folders, programs won't work. I haven't come across any that aren't opening, but was just curious.

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